What I Ate and Drank in North Korea, Part I: Eats in the DPRK

So, as I mentioned a little while ago, I went to North Korea late last year. It was probably one of the more bizarre trips of my life, and I've been on more than a few unusual ones.

And as I promised, I'll tell you a little about what I ate there. I'll also let you know what that awful, curdled-looking bottled drink was that I asked you to guess about.

But first I'll answer the questions you posed back when. I'll warn you, though, the answers go on for a long bit, because I went into some detail. If you just want to look at pictures of food, feel free to skip ahead. The bottled drink answer is at the very bottom:

KerryandTom: Yes, I did get to try local North Korean beers, and we visited the local brewery in Pyongyang, the Dadong Brewery. I'm afraid I didn't end up with any photos worth using, though.

In kind of a typical North Korean exchange, we sat down and were given a menu that promised the option of light beer (lager) or dark beer (a porter, from what I gathered). We'd been having the lager our entire trip--entirely serviceable, if not great (think somewhat warm Heineken)--so I ordered the dark.

A few minutes later, the waitress returned and whispered a few embarrassed words to our senior guide. Then our guide brightly explained to us that I would be having the light beer--the brewery just happened to be all out of the dark.

Myradiol, Sheilazb: I went because I enjoy going to places most people miss, and because I've been itching to go ever since my last chance to go to the DPRK a few years ago was scotched when yet another missile crisis flared up and North Korea temporarily banned Americans at the last minute.

As for getting permission, if that's what you meant, there's a misconception that it's illegal for Americans to travel there. It's not. (It's also technically not illegal for Americans to travel to Cuba--it's illegal for them to spend any money there.) Travel to North Korea, however, has to be conducted through approved groups, mostly operating out of Beijing. You have to have two North Korean guides with you at all times. It's also pretty damn expensive, and if you're going to complain about the fact that you can only go to the places North Korean officials have signed off on, then you should probably book a flight somewhere else.

If you're interested in booking a tour, please feel free to let me know and I'll put you in touch with an agency I highly recommend.

Larrylee13: We had the option of having dog, but opted out. My traveling companion, Mark, and I figured we'd been to enough places where dog's on the menu that it wasn't something we needed to go out of our way to try--in fact, there was a dog restaurant near our hotel in Beijing on the trip back. Plus, our guides gave us the impression that, as in South Korea, it's not really all that popular a dish there anymore, national stereotypes notwithstanding.

The nail in the coffin was that we didn't have a lot of time, and could either go for dog stew or to what our North Korean guides kept insisting was the Pyongyang Pizza Hut. And there was no way we were missing that. (I'll describe that trip in an upcoming post.)

Esther: For the most part, I didn't see anything North Korean food-wise that would have been unfamiliar to South Koreans, except maybe the "barbecue" clams, which I'll describe more fully below. And I did make a point of trying the North Korean versions of non-Korean foods--I'll describe that in more detail in a future post dedicated purely to the DPRK take on Western culture.

To address the guilt part: It's complicated. I'll get into it a little more below, when I describe what we ate versus what our guides ate, but we, as Americans, obviously went over filled with deep ambivalence about what we were doing and what it meant in the larger picture. But I have to clear up a common misconception right away. After "Isn't it illegal to go?" the most common question I get from Americans about the trip was "Did you see people starving on the side of the roads?" I always feel like I'm disappointing them when I respond that the parts we saw were a functioning society, even if was noticeably threadbare and all the painted median lines on the empty highways had faded away long before we got there. There were no starving people on the side of the roads that we saw, or parents offering their daughters to us for sale, or even dead-eyed Party members robotically plotting to destroy Houston.

There are many grains of salt to be taken, of course--we saw what government wanted us to see, and weren't given access to the parts of the country most affected by the devastating floods that seem to hit the country every few years nowadays. But it wasn't like were holed up in a Potemkin village our entire two-week stay. We wandered on the streets in the cities we visited, mingled with commuters on the subway, swam through crowds of people waiting for the bus (you'd be amazed how many North Koreans can fit on one of those ancient recycled Czech buses), went to the library, happened upon family picnics in parks, rode festival rides alongside locals at the fair, spent a national holiday wandering among the large groups at the Kim Il Sung monument (that first pic I took above), and raced with kids hiking alongside up a popular mountain resort. A lot of the people we were among were what I gathered passed for the middle-class and upper-class in the DPRK, but I managed to catch a few glimpses of a couple obviously rough areas, as well, and I can honestly say I didn't catch sight of a single person begging for food. I don't think I could say that about a single country I've been to in the Americas or Europe.

That said, I stress again that the government obviously didn't allow us to visit the parts of the country hit worst by flooding and famine. I trust the reports of hundreds of thousands rendered homeless last year, for example--something we knew far more about than our guides, it's worth noting. Mark and I ran into a couple German aid workers (in a Viennese-style coffeehouse just off Kim Il-Sung Square, of all places). They said that, though the affected areas are now significantly smaller than before and the prevailing Western belief in that North Koreans are dying in droves is rather overblown, there's no question that the people in those regions are suffering gravely.

I guess what I learned to keep in mind is that there's propaganda and disinformation on both sides. For the North Korean part, it's ceaseless--you can't escape those cheaply made statues of the Kims, the Eternity Towers, or the loudspeaker-laden trucks that roll through the city streets shouting upbeat maxims of the Eternal Leader. (Everyone ignores them.) Any North Korean with even a modicum of ambition wears little red-flag Kim Il-Sung or Kim Jong-Il pins on their lapels (which reminded me unsettlingly of the Stars and Stripes pins American politicians have unfailingly worn ever since Sept. 11). The international postage stamps feature pictures of North Korean soldiers bayoneting Japanese and American soldiers--as far as they're concerned, they're still fighting the Korean War and the Japanese occupation combined.

But we've got propaganda on our side, as well. For various reasons, it's easier for politicians, pundits and late-night comedians to write off the DPRK as an utterly failed state, the global community's inbred country bumpkin who happens to possess nuclear capabilities but can't tie its own shoes. But to accept that black-and-white portrait is akin to what North Korea does when it programs its people to automatically precede the word "American" with "imperialist capitalist" (which, by the way, they actually do!).

I'm not saying the offenses are equal, because they're obviously not, and I certainly don't want anyone to get the impression I'm in anyway defending the regime. I just think we can't be be lazy about the mindset we take toward a unique and incredibly complex society, and it's in our own interests to challenge the assumptions we've developed. North Korea is run by a delusional, dictatorial government that still thinks it's living in the 1950s, and whose pretensions of universal equality are risible. But North Korea's also not the joke we've become comfortable writing it off as.

So I guess the short answer to your question is: Yes, I did feel guilty eating knowing that there were so many starving in North Korea. I still feel guilty about it. But then isn't it fair to ask if you feel guilty eating knowing there are so many starving in the U.S.?

You also asked about aspects of my personal interactions with the locals: Generally, most people didn't try to speak to me unbidden, much less in Korean. First off, it was pretty obvious right off the bat that, while friendly people, they're definitely not as forward as their South Korean counterparts, for understandable reasons. They're generally shy around foreigners, and I don't think there was any mistaking me for a local, and not just because my friend Mark and I were automatically the tallest guys in the room (sometimes by a foot or more) anywhere we went that was otherwise just locals. And certainly no one tried speaking the native tongue to me expecting to hear it spoken back. (Which is the same reaction I get from any Asian group, to be honest, except the Japanese and the Afghans, for some reason.) I'd say they were a lot more outgoing with Mark and me at the fair we went to, and at the DMZ, as I'm just about to explain.

As for how they reacted to my genetic background (for those who don't know me in real life, by the way, my mother is ethnic North Korean and my father is South Korean; I was born and raised in the U.S.), once they figured out what the hell I was, they were universally instantly entranced. At the DMZ, one of the young army officers stationed there even left his post there and rode back with us part of the way so that he could ask me, through a translator, endless questions about my life and my thoughts on the situation on the Korean peninsula, and even how I felt about nuclear weapons. (You can breathe easy: We both agreed nuclear war is bad.) By the end of the trip, our guides and driver and other locals we met insisted on referring to me as Korean instead of American, and treated my trip there as a visit to the homeland (which you could argue ties in with what some experts on the regime have said is a race-based fascist philosophy that's taken hold there). So yeah, I'd say we were treated pretty chummily because of my background.

(Remind me to show you some of the stuff I brought back, by the way, Esther.)

Joanne: The national dish was probably kimchi, but I'd also argue that the real national dish might be plain fish broth, for reasons I'll explain below. As for the grocery stores, I didn't get to go to the grey-market "frog" markets that have sprouted up in cities and villages (called "frog markets" because the vendors hop away at the sight of police, only to return promptly when the cops have left), because that was strictly off-limits. We didn't even get to hold local currency (more on that below). We did, however, pay a visit to the "high-end" department store/supermarket where the native elite and foreigners shop, next door to the brewery. It was needlessly expensive, and I saw a roach scuttle under the bread bins. It's also where I bought that nasty-looking bottled drink.

So, now that all the Q & A's are out of the way, here's the food:

As with Korean restaurants in the States or South Korea, you get a whole fleet of banchan when you sit down. In our case, the food was often already set out, and sometimes tasted and felt like it might have been sitting out a little too long. Which was not surprising, since the restaurants we went to--almost all dedicated to serving large tour groups of Westerners or Chinese--weren't really geared to a tour group of two--my college buddy Mark and me. If you know your Korean food, you won't need me to recite to you what's what in the banchan bowls above. If not, go out to your local Korean restaurant this week, and you'll probably recognize most or all of the dishes from the pic.

The service was always meticulous, attentive and friendly, even if the dinnerware was more practical than pretty, and didn't always have the ostentatious sheen and over-the-top excess you sometimes get in South Korean or Korean-American restos these days. Just like in "our" Korean restaurants and homes, the metal chopsticks are way too skinny to for me to use comfortably, what with my poor fine-motor skills and old split knuckle.

Mostly, the main courses were fairly simple--after the banchan and maybe some tempura, you'd get, perhaps, a spicy chigai, stew with beef, vegetables and tofu (our junior guide, immediately sensing how clumsy I can be, did all the work in the photo above). We had a lot of grilled fish on the bone, occasional bits of meat--say a couple pieces of kalbi (grilled short ribs) with rice. There wasn't a surfeit of food, but we never left the table hungry.

For almost every meal, Mark and I sat in empty dining rooms. Our guides usually ate in a separate area behind a curtain or past the kitchen, or otherwise set away from us. Not wanting to rock the boat, I didn't question why. Later, I assumed that it was because our guides and we spent something like 16 to 18 hours a day cooped up together all day, and they needed a break from us.

Toward the end of our trip, after the guides and we had bonded, I finally poked my head in their separate dining room and asked what they'd eaten. One guide told me uncomplainingly that they'd had fish broth--just plain fish broth, without any fish flesh or meat in it. I don't think they even got rice.

Then I realized in a flash that all the resources had gone to feeding--overfeeding--the foreign tourists, and the guides had been eating separately all along because they didn't want us to see how their meals stacked up against ours. I felt pretty damn guilty then.

One day, we went on a mountain hike to a popular resort area that was packed with crowds of schoolkids, families and even groups of elderly couples. This snack shack, which served kebabs and Korean-style pancakes, was doing brisk business.

I should mention one of the peculiarities of dealing with North Korean shops as a foreigner. As I said before, we weren't allowed to even touch North Korean money. Instead, the places we were allowed to buy from accepted Chinese renminbi, U.S. dollars, and euros (many were under the impression that dollars and euros were basically equal). The problem was when they tried to give us change. In about half the cases, we'd get a mishmash of Chinese, American and EU notes that were a rough estimate of what we ought to have gotten back.

But many places, including the biggest international hotel in Pyongyang, quickly ran out of small foreign bills and found that they couldn't actually come up with change. So one of two things would happen: One, if he or she couldn't scrounge up enough bills from a neighboring shop or pal, the shopkeeper would simply cancel the transaction. This only happened once or twice.

Or two, the shopkeeper would give change in bottles of water, with one bottle of water equal to one dollar/euro. This odd, one-way barter system was what usually ended up happening. And it happened a lot. By the end of our trip, we were awash in bottled water, with maybe a dozen sloshing around in our van, in our backpacks, rolling around in the hotel room. I ended up carrying my backpack everywhere because, though my pockets could hold plenty of change and bills, they couldn't hold enough bottles of water. And I'm one of those thirsty guys who drinks at least eight to 10 pint glasses of water a day, and maybe five or six glasses on average out at dinner. We tried giving bottles of water away, but North Koreans don't seem to be as crazy about bottled water as those weird foreigners, always walking around with dozens of waters all the time ....

So my piece of advice to future travelers to North Korea: Don't worry about stocking up on bottled water. You'll have more than you know what to do with, whether you like it or not. Bring small bills instead.

This is what breakfasts generally looked like. Understanding that Westerners, and Americans in particular, have a different set of foods they eat in the early morning than at midday or evening, but not getting the details quite right, the North Koreans would lay out a plate of buttered toast (the toast was always buttered, and often came with a thin layer of jelly no matter what meal of the day it came with), cold cuts, and usually a kicker, something that came out of left field, like pickled fish or tempura. That tiny mug by Mark in the photo above, which looks like it might hold an espresso? It's full of toothpicks, not coffee.

I got to try a more typical North Korean breakfast a couple times, and it was fairly familiar--juk (rice porridge), a couple chunks of mackerel, marinated bean sprouts, watered-down kimchi, maybe a boiled egg.

In South Korea, it's a common sight to see hunched-over grandmothers laying fruits out to dry on hot, sunny days. Same here. I forget what these are called, but they were sour.

A typical dinner: fried flatfish, cucumber salad, and mandu. We had this meal in a coastal town. Though this dinner was fine, my actual favorite meal of the entire trip took place not far outside.

Promising to leave our cameras behind--this was strictly an off-the-books excursion--we walked with the guides out on a very long, wooden-and-concrete jetty that jutted out from the shore not too far from our hotel. It was busy with locals who were fishing, playing, chatting, walking bikes, eating, drinking. On the shore side of the jetty, people had set up charcoal braziers to grill up freshly caught fish and the occasional clam. Their customers squatted down and huddled around the braziers in casual groups, loosely exchanging small talk and chuckles.

We chose a friendly looking circle of folks with enough space for the four of us and sat down, chatting with our fellow diners (including a couple soldiers, male and female) about the weather, noshing on hot, flaky grilled croaker, and sipping on warm beer as the sun set across the water. After the meal, we spent a few minutes just hanging out, listening to the soft chatter along the jetty, before rejoining the official program.

At a meal with our guides and driver, we had this rather eclectic dinner including a Chinese-style beef stirfry, hot dogs on a stick, cobs of corn, the usual Korean sides like kimchi, fried eggplant, sesame leaves, etc., and tempura. Dessert was typical Korean--oranges.

We also had mul nyaengmyun, buckwheat noodles in a cold, clear beef broth, topped with assorted finely cut vegetables. It came at the end of a long, hot day, and was satisfying and refreshing--one of my favorite meals there.

Remember that photo of the banchan? I just wanted to direct your attention to the level of detail on the kamja jeon, fried potato slices. There was as obvious, endearing, almost naive belief that if you did every little aspect of your job as well as you could possibly do it, the satisfaction of a job well-done was its own reward. Like I said, the whole society seems stuck in the '50s.

I snagged this North Korean recipe for homemade kimchi. The weird thing? The handwriting looks exactly like my mom's. I'm mulling having a blind taste test using this recipe, my mother's, and the recipe a friend got from his South Korean mother-in-law's. Think it's worth it?

Another "Chinese-style" dinner, with a sweet-and-sour tofu, the usual kimchi varieties, and a plate of scrambled eggs that I at first thought was gyeranmari, a kind of Korean omelet made with vegetables and kim (nori-style seaweed), but turned out to be just a plate of scrambled eggs.

And here's what a North Korean fair looks like, though it was far more crowded than this particular photo I took right before we left suggests. There was a somewhat fancy-looking restaurant on the premises, but we skipped it and went on the rides instead. I kicked ass on the bumper cars, by the way--the locals seemed almost too polite to actually, y'know, bump.

So you remember how I said my favorite meal in the DPRK was the impromptu grilled fish on the jetty in that seaside town? It was followed by the worst, but most memorable.

If you just saw the photo in passing, you might have thought the man in it was peeing on a fire. He wasn't, but it might've improved the flavor.

Here's what happened. After our excursion to the jetty, our guides excitedly asked us if we'd like to try an authentic local specialty. "Barbecue clams!" they exclaimed.

A no-brainer, we thought. We were literally feet from the shore. I envisioned the DPRK version of a Cape Cod clambake, a particularly revered tradition among my group of friends. We instantly agreed to meet back in the parking lot of the hotel in 30 minutes.

Twenty-five minutes later, Mark and I were on the parking lot, eagerly eyeing the moonlight rippling off the waves just a few yards away by the beach. We started down the trail to the sand, only to be called back to the parking lot.

There, our driver had laid out a grid of large clams on the asphalt. In one hand was a plastic bottle of gasoline. In the other, a match.

As the shells crackled, blackened, and burned, he went through not one, but two bottles of gasoline. Whenever the flames threatened to dwindle to, say, less than three feet high, he laid on a stream of gas that caused the fire to leap dangerously close to the overhanging branches of the very dry-looking tree he'd chosen to set up under. The whole parking lot reeked of what I imagined the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon disaster to be like.

Finally, he announced that the clams were ready. Whether he knew that because the clams were so burnt the shells were starting to crack and cave in on themselves, or because he'd used up all his gasoline, I don't know.

When it came to eating the damn things, we were in a bind. Our North Korean hosts were digging in with gusto. We had to join them. I tentatively picked a clam out only to have it crumble between my fingers. I tossed out the shards of charred shell as best I could, tore out the tenaciously clinging flesh inside, gave it a quick rinse in the bowls of water they'd set aside, and then popped it in my mouth.

Rubbery, overcooked, tough as shoe leather. I gagged. As for the taste? It tasted like raw gasoline. The fumes went up my nostrils and made me dizzy. My stomach churned. It was as bad as slimy, chewy duck tongues. It was far worse than sand-filled wedding camel.

"Good, right?" one guide asked, beaming. "Very special dish from this area!"

I managed a thumbs up to our hosts. Mark wasn't faring too well. He was picking at his sample as if it were something he'd discovered on the bottom of his shoe. Under the enthusiastic eyes of our guides, who wolfed theirs down, I managed to get six of the suckers down my gullet, though the last one almost came back up. I think Mark only ate one and a half.

We had a real, sit-down dinner soon afterward. I couldn't taste any of it. All I could smell was gasoline.

Finally, here's the full photo of the bottled drink I asked you all to guess at. It was a sweeted mashed-potato drink. Yes, I said a mashed-potato drink. It was potatoes, water and sugar. It was lumpy. It was sweet where my brain was screaming, "This is supposed to have gravy on it." And it had already fermented a little bit, making it slightly, unpleasantly, fizzy.

That's it for this round, but I'll share more photos and DPRK memories in two more posts--there was just too much to fit in this time. The second will be about my visit to North Korean cooperative farms, and the third about North Korea's rather bizarre attempts to recreate Western and American culture.

Any other questions? Should I do the North Korean-South Korean blind taste-test homemade-kimchi showdown?

I think you ought to be OK, MArfesbistro. The main starch you'll eat is short-grain rice, it isn't a dairy-based culture, and you can simply skip the tofu you're served.

On the down side, it might be a little more difficult for them to accommodate requests to keep soy sauce out of some dishes, though. I wouldn't expect much flexibility in the way dishes are prepared, or the opportunity for substitutions.

MArfesBistro 01:52:44 PM on 08/18/13

going to DPRK in 2 weeks and greatly appreciated your comments and iinformation. I am gluten, dairy and soya free. Now I know I will find food. Was wondering if it would be a good idea to bring some dried food in case. Bringing nuts and vegan protein but think I might need more. what say you

janetmow 04:11:27 PM on 07/15/13

Fascinating! Can't wait to read the next installments -- and reports from your travels to other countries.

michaelypark 09:30:07 PM on 07/11/13

I'm just going to assume that you say that because you find me so delectable, Wflaan.

Esther, it's definitely something I thought about, and we always asked if they wanted to join us for dinner, but they're definitely a proud people, maybe the most stubbornly proud I've ever met, and straight-out offering them food would definitely not have gone over well.

esung1 04:35:18 PM on 07/11/13

fascinating. And for some reason, I can totally conjure up the smell of the gasoline clams. Bleah. I can't believe you ate as many as you did. And the fish broth story is totally heartbreaking. I wonder what would have happened if you'd tried to offer some of your food to your guide.

cremdela 01:35:02 PM on 07/11/13

Thank you, Michael, I really enjoyed hearing about your experience, well written and interesting. It's fascinating to me how even the remotest cultures politically try to emulate American "cuisine". Looking forward to parts 2 and 3.

wflaan 01:05:34 PM on 07/11/13

You mentioned that they had dog on the menu....... Pity they did not have human on the menu and YOU for the first course!